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About troy P.

A year ago today we spoke not of homophobes masquerading as bureaucrats, projecting their personal perversions upon decent folk simply longing to pee in peace.

A year ago today we knew not of divisive poseur tyrants-in waiting, whipping up a delusional privileged few into a bully storm of intolerance, vomiting notions of “building walls” instead of tearing them down.

No, a year ago today we touched victory. And love. And peace. Even if only for a spell. A year ago today we flooded the streets in celebration of the revelation that for the first time in American history, most ALL people were finally freed the privilege of plunging heart-first into the marital mistake.

A respite, a ruddy hint of what “We The People” are truly capable of, a year ago today was a very good day indeed.

Enjoying a few too many cocktails recently, I was describing the following post, which had only up until that point been scribbled somewhere inside my head. To my tipsy surprise, the friend with whom I was speaking told me that I definitely needed to publish these thoughts. Understanding they may very well have been equally as tipsy as I, still, now I have.

Please don’t ever think that you have nothing. The only nothing you have, is the nothing you refuse to let go of, ignoring all the everythings around you in your ragged pursuit of it.

Let’s put it this way: imagine you’re a child at a party. Not just any party, but your birthday party. Your party, spent slouched in a chair sobbing, holding a deflated crippled balloon flaccidly in your lap. You tried to breathe new life into it, but every desperate effort was damned as the molecules of heaving air escaped through the unseen, unforeseen gash towards the opposite end. Weepily raising your head towards the sky you bellow at No One, lamenting the fact that this balloon – this very special singularly unique balloon – is no longer thriving, no longer yours to adore.

Your caterwauling never reaches its wail-volume potential however, being muffled instead by the tens of hundreds of bright balloons surrounding you – at this very moment bouncing off against your head, neck, back, and flanks. All of them full, vibrantly alive, and desiring of your attention. Bouncing joyfully in the hopes that in catching your tear-filled eye, they might persuade your entrenched frown right side ‘round.

These balloons not only absorb your mournful yelps, they also have the power to sooth your pain, muffling the hurt similar to the way they do the dirge. At the risk of taking the analogy too far, these balloons – these hundreds of balloons that are afloat especially for you on your special day – have the power to lift you up straight up out of your misery, up even out of yourself.

More often than not, this scenario I feel finds us choosing to ignore the hundreds of joyful choices around us, focusing instead our energies in attempting to resurrect the death that lies before us, this torn past unreturnable. If you’re like me in this, I’d remind you again to please not be that way. I have learned through my own wasted exertions that the nothing that once was will never again be. For even if it does come back ‘round, it will be something different than what is was before, something familiar yet new.

Truly, the nothing you think you’re trying to hold on to is already gone. It mightn’t have been your fault, but that isn’t the point. Let it go. Let it go so that you can grab on to the everythings that are right now at your door, beckoning to you, begging to lift you up as they too soar.

So please, don’t ever believe that you have nothing. For any nothing you do have, is simply the nothing that you alone choose to keep.

I’ve struggled with this one. Both in committing the words to paper, and in pondering whether to even publish them at all. I only decided on the latter recently because I will this Sunday be one year past signing papers that free-fall gave me back to myself, at a very heavy cost.

This note serves both as a capstone to my final stage of grief as well as a promise to those of you going down a similar road, that it does end. And you can in fact not only survive, but grow from the experience.

As always, I hope you enjoy…

To date I’ve learned to let go of:

Your allegiance towards your tribe over me,
And my understanding of what family truly is.

Your manipulation of my life towards meeting your individual goals,
And my complicity in this to ensure your happiness.

Your disregard over my own goals while doing so,
And my disregard of same.

Your infidelity,
And my courting temptation also to fill the hole you left.

Your persistent denial of,
And my surrogate guilt over, your perfidy.

Your continued attempts manipulating me and the circumstances, well after you’d no more use for either,
And my sense of injustice over witnessing it.

Your deception in purging me from your family and our friends once you’d wrung me dry,
And my understanding of what allegiance truly is.

Your eventual success in doing just that, even with my very own children.
All in the same fashion, one at time, over the course of time. Taking your time. Much like a form of water torture wherein the victim loves the water more than oneself.

Your every effort in having me erase my own life,
And my willingness to do so.

Your total and complete denial over all of the above,
And your narcissistic lack of regard for me throughout.

You early on joked that we’d never divorce, as you would kill me first instead. I now realize just how serious your intent was on the latter part of this jest.

I didn’t die though.

I’m still here.

And since I am, the last thing I need to let go of, the very last item I will lose through this useless and hate-filled rape of my proffered love and trust, is my anger towards you.

As such, and whilst I’ll most likely need to remind myself manifold times over the next few months (years, decades, whatever), you are forgiven.

You are forgiven.

Find peace. Get well. Treat your next love like they matter. Treat your next love better.

Or don’t. Ultimately it’s your choice alone, for it is no longer any concern of mine.

I observed them as they exited the nearby church, in twos and threes, mothers and children both, freshly ashen-faced. (And just where are the fathers anyway? Do we ALL get tossed aside unneeded after our seed and wallets have been harvested?) While they trudged through the cold air determinedly to get back into their colder still cars, I noticed something.

Of these husbandless tribes, some of the children seemed typically miserable, exact-mirroring the look of the maternal unit they were trying diligently to distance themselves from, lagging behind. And then there were others who were atypically fully engaged with their mothers, animatedly eye-to-eye communicating while staying close, better to prove their “whatever their point is anyways,” as clearly and lovingly as possible.

It’s probably no surprise that I found myself jealous of this latter group, what with me being a recently reluctant member of the tossed aside dad club too. But I also noted envy towards the former group as well; similar to the way I imagine a legless man must feel about someone with a limp. “’Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all,’ is a statement clearly concocted by one who has never actually had to test the theory,” I clucked to myself in defiance to that particular cult of thought.

The light greened, and I drove off to career pt. 2 of 4, forgetting soon thereafter about the experience till just now. Life does move on after all, whether you be limbed, amputated, or merely limping along.

The rum slugged forth from the bottle, much like suffering a urinary tract infection.
Growling in a similarly stunted sloppy fashion to no one, he cursed while watching some nectar splash helplessly past the glass’s rim, onto the perpetually crumb-filled countertop.

The idea of inspecting the bottle’s pour for possible logjams never occurred, as he relished a certain unforeseen satisfaction in failing even this simple task of drinking himself to death.

From the floor, his cat sat licking in solidarity errant drops that reached their snout. Much like their master’s, the measure was enough to numb, never enough to kill.

*2

His eyes poured over her while watching another “indie” film that would linger long after the TV dimmed, the subsequential lovemaking exhausted.

They’d avoided speaking of the idea of “love,” as both previously had been ravaged by the self-serving narcissists each entrusted theirs with. Ignoring tomorrows unguaranteed, they instead relished Todays spent together.

Gazing upon her now, he filled with joy previously unknown. A joy he wanted not just tonight, nor tomorrow, but lifetimes to come.

Her cat nestled atop them as the movie plugged along, almost hinting that here is where he too should stay. Here he’d find life anew.

Admittedly, I had drawn this one up sometime ago, and even had it proofread to ensure that I chose the proper of two endings.

Still, it had a Halloweenish tinge to it, so I saved it till just now, this very week, in order to post.

Week next(ish) we’ll jump back a year again, and until then and as always, I hope you enjoy.

The year was 1974, the song was “Love’s Theme” by Love Unlimited…

She hated his music, loathed it in fact. Always loud, obnoxious, screech-laden and filled with lyrics that she attributed to having mostly been something akin to blasphemy, had they been intelligible in the first.

She hated his music, truly, and the very worst was when he would go rumbling off into the shower, plugging his witches lament into the decrepit portable CD player that marred the otherwise docile air of the tiny white tiled bathroom they shared. Once the water was piping hot, the music too would begin to pipe through from under the bathroom door ajar’d, along with the steam and whatever pent-up anger he was washing off from his day.

She hated his music, but she tried her best to put up with it. They were roommates after all, and people who lived with each other needed to adapt. Her way of doing so was to try to ignore it as long as she could, hoping that it would cease before she lost her already loosened screw. Sitting in the hallway just outside, she would mentally try to tune down the cacophony, tight-lip screwing her face into a grimace worthy of dysentery while waiting on the silence.

She hated his music, and as he took dreadfully long showers, apparently playing an imaginary concert in his mind while lathering his body down, she could never find it within herself to outlast the audio carnage spewing forth, the billowing shower’s steam muffling it far too little. As a result she would often find herself wafting open the bathroom door, while dashing quickly into the haze of steam and heat. Being careful as to not look directly in on him while running over to the CD player, she would quickly paw the STOP button before bolting from the room in as hasty a fashion.

She hated his music, and knew he hated when she pulled this stunt as she could hear him scream bloody blue, seemingly at the CD player, over this abrupt silence. She always hoped for the best, but in each and every instance, it wouldn’t be but in a few heartbeats time before she would hear him splash from the tub and angrily stab the PLAY button once more to announce his encore of loud.

Today she watched him again on his bathroom sojourn, though this time proceeding sloth-like, gingerly placing a CD that she rarely saw him with into the player’s tray, instead of his usual fare. She was not surprised by the selection this time, as she had overheard the conversation he’d had just minutes before. She couldn’t hear what was being said from the other end, but by his reaction it was plain to see that he had had his heart broken once more.

Just like the last time, he immediately took all the blame – though in her opinion, just like the last time, nearly none of it rightfully belonged to him. And again, just like the last time, he immediately grabbed for his usually unused Barry White disc, a present from his now-deceased mother who truly never did understand his musical stylings either. Something about this disc must have somehow brought him closer to his mother, possibly the only woman ever who never demanded anything from him, never verbally bullied him, never made her love conditional, and never gave up on him.

In this context, the title track, “Love’s Theme,” blared more mournfully than most others would hear it, and – as he had the rigged the player to do so – tonight at least would immediately repeat itself each time its dulcet tones faded into silence.

She hated his music, but she loved this song. And she loved him even more. So much more so in fact that her heart would often flutter, as if it belonged to that of a schoolgirl, over the mere idea of their being together. As such she couldn’t understand why, especially given all the disasters he had had with his other relationships, he never once even thought to give her a try. She knew him better than anyone else, she too never demanded nor expected anything from him, and in all the years he’d lived here with her, she had never once – not even with the loud and obnoxious music – thought about giving up on him. As the song entered something like its 800th iteration, she decided to pull her stunt just once more, but this time she wouldn’t run from the room. This time she would wait for him, and talk with him, and express herself to him. This time would be different. This time he would notice her.

She hated his music, but this time was different. This time the silence fell like a temple wall on the mourning, like the dropped casket in a quiet church. This time, instead of running, she sat quietly down in the chair across from the shower, waiting for him to acknowledge the silence and her. Time stood still for a moment, which meant forever, which meant it was over before it began, and the solitary slam of his fist against the wall alerted her as to what sort of mood she’d have to first contend with while telling him of her love.

“GoddammIT!” he quietly yelled into his chest, and then again louder to the ceiling. “Why can’t you give me just this once? Just this once without randomly turning off mid-song???” he tore open the curtain to see the room as it always was, foggy, white tiled, small, and empty of all life sans his own and that of the nameless cat that lived with him. He had no idea why the feline was just sitting there again staring intently at him, nor why that damned CD player would constantly shut off like it did. Lord knows he had paid enough for it not to do so. He went to hit the PLAY button again but then stopped mid-thought as he saw his raisinesque digits and realized that he’d probably shriveled in his lament long enough.

Drying off, he turned out the lights and scratched the top of the cat’s head absent-mindedly before leaving the room. He mused as she walked close enough by his side as to squeeze through the door with him that he should probably name her one day – hell, besides his mom, she had been the only other woman who’d never given up on him…